#InternetKillSwitch: Alan W. Silberberg on the U.S. version of the web shutdown

(CBS News/What's Trending) Part of What's Trending's mission is to bring you insight from bloggers and other voices on the internet who have become an expert on their topics in this digital age. On Mondays, we'll be bringing you a special column by Alan W. Silberberg, CEO of Silberberg Innovations and founder of Gov20LA and Principal Analyst with Constellation Research Group. He'll be showing you how politics affects your online life.

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Uh-oh. There is trouble in those streets, and the government is worried about negative criticism so the Internet gets shut down. Syria? Egypt? Libya? Nope. This scenario is coming to the USA. While long bandied about by certain elements of the homeland security brigade, the Internet Kill Switch is about to become a reality for you and me.

By now you are slapping yourself on the head and asking, "How? Why here in the United States, where we have both a bill of rights and a constitution, can this be allowed to happen?"

The debate around this issue did not just start in January when the world saw one country after another toppled, but has been around for many years. In fact,  in the chaos after 9/11 -- from which the Patriot Act was born -- began the seeds of this thorny bush now growing.

So, Senator Lieberman, in his esteemed wisdom as failed presidential and vice presidential candidate and party switching senator, has set his sights on not only making sure the USA has an Internet Kill Switch, but making it one of the most onerous ones out there. The latest version of this bill, which seems likely to pass soon, allows for a shutdown of up to four months. The old bill allowed for sequential 30 day closure periods. Neither is good.

Stop and think about that for a minute. From the consumer perspective that means life as we know it would go back to being fed canned information on TV news, same for radio and what few real newspapers are left in the publishing business. There goes transparency in media. There goes transparency period. It means no Groupon for your shopping needs, it means no check-ins with your favorite location based system. It means no streaming Netflix into your living room. But wait, this is far more serious.

America's economy has shifted very heavily to e-commerce based service delivery. Are our country's leaders serious about trying to revive our moribund economy? Then,  killing off the base that allows a big part of our economy to succeed is nothing short of the most bone-headed and dumb idea I have heard come from a U.S. politician (from either party) in a long, long time. Groups from all sides of the political spectrum have raised concerns and are upset about the possibility of this bill being passed by the U.S. Congress. We just recently witnessed the power of transparency with the Japan crisis -- in which the Japanese Prime Minister was contradicted from both other foreign governments and from a large number of experts and journalists using the internet to both fact-check and research his statements. So, that should just go away?

So apparently while the citizens of the United States were celebrating what we have seen as freedom erupting around the world, our leaders have become even more scared and paranoid. No,  that is simply the opposite transparency in action for sure.